Yiddish proverbs - money

Money is on many people’s minds at the moment. I know it is on my mind. We watch the financial crisis unfolding on TV or the internet like a slow motion train wreck. Sovereign debt crisis. Quantitive easing. Credit default swaps. Fiat currency collapse. Inflation-deflation. Moral hazard. Record gold prices.

It was much simpler in the old days (when I was a kid): you worked for money, then you spent it. Sometimes you even saved it to spend later. I agree with Paul Volcker: the last good innovation from the financial industry was the automatic teller machine. I also agree with Teddy Roosevelt:

Americanism means the virtues of courage, honour, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood - the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price ... the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

The one good thing coming out of this whole international financial quagmire is that the collective consciousness is being raised about money and morals and the responsible government necessary to achieve financial health.

You can’t expect a viable economy if the only object of government policy is to be re-elected every four years. Sir Arnold Weinstock

We need to go back to basics. When you are exhausted you still have the strength to be simple.

Here are some Yiddish proverbs passed down the generations. They were valid back then, they are valid today but nobody thinks of them.

Golden dreams make men wake hungry.

Interest on debts grows without rain.

Money buys everything but good sense.

If you have nothing to lose, you can try anything.

Once poor, never rich.

Money doesn't grow on trees.

Money is round, so it rolls away.

If I dealt in candles, the sun wouldn't set; if I dealt in shrouds, people would stop dying.

Charge nothing and you'll get a lot of customers.

Every seller praises his wares.

Life is the cheapest bargain - you get it for nothing.

What you save is, later, like something found.

A penny saved is a penny earned.

A penny is sometimes better spent than spared.

A penny is a lot of money - if you haven't got a penny.

The heaviest thing in the world is an empty pocket.

He that cannot pay, let him pray.

A heavy purse makes a light heart.

A golden key will open every lock.

It costs money to sin.              
A trade makes you a king, but robs you of your leisure.

Gold's father is dirt, yet it regards itself as noble.

Golden dishes will never turn black.

Better an ounce of luck than a pound of gold.

When luck joins in the game, cleverness scores double.

A rich man who is stingy is the worst pauper.

A rich man's foolish sayings pass for wise ones.

With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too.

If the rich could hire someone to die for them, the poor would make a wonderful living.

The truly rich are those who enjoy what they have.

Happy poverty overcomes everything.

He who comes for the inheritance is often made to pay for the funeral.

When the father gives to his son, both laugh; when the son gives to his father, both cry.

Image from Wikipedia: silver shekel minted in Jerusalem in the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 68 C.E.

We who merely happen to be walking around

Here is another interesting video for you. It’s an amazingly high quality film of the view from a streetcar travelling down Market Street in San Francisco in 1905. What I found so unusual in this film is that there is nothing… unusual. It must be that we are so used to seeing bad quality films of this period that we begin to think that all people walked like Charlie Chaplin or something, or that they were in some way quaint or inferior to us. In this film we see clearly that the people are like us. The policeman gives us his universal policeman stare, people gingerly cross the street avoiding the tracks as we would do, the fellow on the bicycle rides like anyone you would see today, the boy running could be the neighbour’s son.

From there it is easy to see that two hundred years ago or even a thousand years ago, apart from the props, people were basically the same. Just because we live in an era that is technologically, politically and socially more ‘advanced’ (so to speak), it does not necessarily mean we are better or even different than people who came before us. To me, the film illustrates clearly our alikeness, our solidarity with our ancestors. We, like they, are merely living in the ‘now’ of the present moment. We go about our business, thinking - as they probably did - that we are in some way more privileged, more intelligent, more everything than those who came before. But this is not true. I am reminded of a quote from G.K. Chesterton about the importance of tradition:

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

The Story of Stuff, with Annie Leonard

Today I discovered the following video ‘The Story of Stuff’ with Annie Leonard. Here you have the malaise and yes, the tragedy of our time in a simple yet powerful 21-minute media message. Since the 1950’s we have increasingly been brainwashed into accepting as normal a consumer-driven culture and since the 1950’s, strangely enough, personal happiness has been in decline. We live in a world where to live frugally and simply is to be a maverick and something of an eccentric. We spend money we don’t have, to buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.
I have a cellular phone that I bought about 5 years ago. I don’t use it much and it still looks like new. No one I know (or don’t know) still has one like it. Everyone else seems to have a new thin flip phone or Blackberry-type. I find myself thinking I should buy a new one. But only for a moment. I suppose I am becoming eccentric in my old age.
Watch the video, see through the brainwashing and get off the consumer merry-go-round.

'The White Company'

I have been reading an absolutely wonderful little story today - ‘The White Company’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (You can find an online text here at Gutenberg.org). It is the tale of the adventures of a young man raised in a monastery in fourteenth century England who must go out into the world for one year before deciding whether to become a monk or stay in the world. The White Company refers to a company of English longbowmen who wage war on the French.
I have for some time been mulling the idea of writing a novel and this tale is very much of the essence and of the period that I would like to write about. It also has the kind of humour and zest for life that I admire in a writer. Barely a page goes by that I don’t burst out laughing in delight. I thought you would like this example because it centres on a philosophical discussion.

Alleyne, the young adventurer (trained as a clerk by the monks), stumbles upon a couple of arguing students sheltering from the rain under a holly tree at the side of the road. They invite him to partake of their food...

"But I pray you, good youth, to tell us whether you are a learned clerk, and, if so, whether you have studied at Oxenford or at Paris."
"I have some small stock of learning," Alleyne answered, picking at his herring, "but I have been at neither of these places. I was bred amongst the Cistercian monks at Beaulieu Abbey."
"Pooh, pooh!" they cried both together. "What sort of an upbringing is that?"
"_Non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum_," quoth Alleyne. (_It is not every man’s lot to go to Corinth_.)
"Come, brother Stephen, he hath some tincture of letters," said the melancholy man more hopefully. "He may be the better judge, since he hath no call to side with either of us. Now, attention, friend, and let your ears work as well as your nether jaw. _Judex damnatur_--you know the old saw. Here am I upholding the good fame of the learned Duns Scotus against the foolish quibblings and poor silly reasonings of Willie Ockham."
"While I," quoth the other loudly, "do maintain the good sense and extraordinary wisdom of that most learned William against the crack-brained fantasies of the muddy Scotchman, who hath hid such little wit as he has under so vast a pile of words, that it is like one drop of Gascony in a firkin of ditch-water. Solomon his wisdom would not suffice to say what the rogue means."
"Certes, Stephen Hapgood, his wisdom doth not suffice," cried the other. "It is as though a mole cried out against the morning star, because he could not see it. But our dispute, friend, is concerning the nature of that subtle essence which we call thought. For I hold with the learned Scotus that thought is in very truth a thing, even as vapor or fumes, or many other substances which our gross bodily eyes are blind to. For, look you, that which produces a thing must be itself a thing, and if a man's thought may produce a written book, then must thought itself be a material thing, even as the book is. Have I expressed it? Do I make it plain?"
"Whereas I hold," shouted the other, "with my revered preceptor, _doctor, praeclarus et excellentissimus_, that all things are but thought; for when thought is gone I prythee where are the things then? Here are trees about us, and I see them because I think I see them, but if I have swooned, or sleep, or am in wine, then, my thought having gone forth from me, lo the trees go forth also. How now, coz, have I touched thee on the raw?"
Alleyne sat between them munching his bread, while the twain disputed across his knees, leaning forward with flushed faces and darting hands, in all the heat of argument. Never had he heard such jargon of scholastic philosophy, such fine-drawn distinctions, such cross-fire of major and minor, proposition, syllogism, attack and refutation. Question clattered upon answer like a sword on a buckler. The ancients, the fathers of the Church, the moderns, the Scriptures, the Arabians, were each sent hurtling against the other, while the rain still dripped and the dark holly-leaves glistened with the moisture. At last the fat man seemed to weary of it, for he set to work quietly upon his meal, while his opponent, as proud as the rooster who is left unchallenged upon the midden, crowed away in a last long burst of quotation and deduction. Suddenly, however, his eyes dropped upon his food, and he gave a howl of dismay.
"You double thief!" he cried, "you have eaten my herrings, and I without bite or sup since morning."
"That," quoth the other complacently, "was my final argument, my crowning effort, or _peroratio_, as the orators have it. For, coz, since all thoughts are things, you have but to think a pair of herrings, and then conjure up a pottle of milk wherewith to wash them down."

Non-action and the Great Harmony

We have seen in The Power of Non-action that non-action refers to an action that is not motivated by selfish desires but is inspired by universal truths and values. We also saw that the more an action is ego-less, the more power it has and the more support it receives from the powers that be. In No action is lost we lifted the cover on the significance and the power of all our thoughts, all our words and all our actions however secret because we are all interconnected as beings of consciousness. Our thoughts, words, and actions have an impact in the world and for the future in ways and degrees beyond our power to comprehend. The anonymous commentator of Tao Te King – Livre du Tao et de sa Vertu (Éditions Dervy) sums up these themes in this unforgettable and revealing passage (my translation from the French):

Without a doubt none of our actions is lost. It would be vain to regret our long and apparently useless labours, our false manoeuvres, the dead ends into which we have stumbled. All these efforts, all these attempts are integrated into the universal life where they have their usefulness and distant consequences – but the arc that they describe to bring us back to the Center is all the wider the more our intention was self-seeking. Inversely, the work that is realised in the serenity of detachment shortens, for he that accomplishes it as for all that it touches, the path of return to the Tao, and cooperates in a direct and immediate way in the Great Harmony.

Selfish thoughts, words and actions insomuch as they are harmful to others (or ourselves) go against the Tao and receive no help or support from it. They have little power, little scope, temporary consequences. Inversely, disinterested thoughts words and actions that nurture, help and bring peace to others and to ourselves accord with the Tao and participate in its power.
Of course we can’t always be saints and we are never always selfish villains. We are always a mixture. An interplay of contradictions. Always the opposites are struggling within us for expression. That’s what makes us human. Shake-speare (De Vere) put it this way:

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not, and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.

Which will predominate in us? The faults of our lower selves or the virtues of our higher selves? As human beings, we have the power to reason and to choose and we make our choices every day, thousands of times, moment by moment. And that is the eternal game of life.
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Photo by Lucia Pizarro Coma

No action is for nothing

Following up my post The Power of Non-action, where we saw that the less an action is selfish, the more power it has, here is another quote from the commentary of Tao Te King – Livre du Tao et de sa Vertu (Éditions Dervy). This quote, which I find delivers its message with a great poetic power, underscores the far-reaching effects of all our actions, even selfish ones. All the more reason to beware. (Translated from the French by me.) As you read it, remember the importance of sincerity.

What I do in secret, me, a tiny being lost in the world, I imagine does not affect anyone else; that what I do stays between me and me; that I can bury it, if I wish, in the silence of an abolished past. Not at all. The past is not inert. The past is a life that continues into the present. The past is a blade whose tip is the present, and the tip of the blade, thrust forward by the momentum of what has been, penetrates into the future to determine what shall be.
Every being, at every moment, acts in a way that saves him or loses him. Thus, every being, at every moment, acts in a way that saves or loses his circle, his family, his profession, his city, the civilisation around him, to a degree that none can know precisely and which is all the more worrisome to a good conscience.
If one thing is certain today, it is the universal solidarity of things and beings in all domains and in all ways. R. P. Sertillanges, Voix françaises, 24 January 1941

We find the same ideas expressed in this quote, from the same book, except the author goes further than mere actions and includes words and even thoughts as having an impact on the outside world:

Nothing is limited in nature; all worlds penetrate each other and all beings are interconnected: each of our words goes much further than the walls of the room where we pronounce them but which seems however to stop them; each of our thoughts, even secret, can be the cause of many things which will forever remain unknown to us. Dr. Marc Haven, Chiromancie dans ‘La Paix Universelle’, No. du 15 juillet 1906

As I was thinking about and writing this post, I stumbled upon (my, my isn’t that a coincidence?) this interesting video Consciousness drives the universe. The video makes the case for a holographic universe, which would explain the interconnectedness of everything.
I remember reading about the split personality of light, how when scientists looked for particles they found particles and when they looked for waves they found waves. What they saw depended on what they were looking for. Do we create reality? This video draws some far-reaching conclusions from there, but I throw it out for your own judgment. One thing I feel: what the scientists are discovering, the sages already knew a long time ago.